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Sunday, April 16, 2006

Love is in the air, my friends. As I staggered around the farm this afternoon, drunk from the yellow sunshine and the heady smell of plum blossoms on the evening breeze, I managed to grab a few macro shots of the flowers' best advertising efforts.

The blossoms on our plum hedge smell heavenly.

Around our plum hedge, bees, weighed down by saddlebags of orange pollen, droned about their business, mostly oblivious to the rest of the world. How I envy them. To know your purpose in life and to follow it, no matter what. How completely liberating that must be! Or bee.

Daffodil

Daffodils of every description are found around our farm yard. Some we inherited from the owners immediately previous to us. Others are very old daffodils that have been blooming here, around the old farm house site, for half a century. Some are ancestral daffodils that we dig up from our old family farm site, near where I-77 crosses the Ohio River.

Bleeding heart, nodding under the weight of its blossoms.

The bleeding heart is already advertising itself to our yet-to-arrive hummingbirds. They should be here tomorrow, according to our 14 years of spring nature notes.

Yesterday evening I heard the dee-deeeee! of a newly arrived broad-winged hawk over our orchard. After I was done appreciating him, I looked down and took this image of one of the thousands of dandelions in our yard.

I love the sunny yellow of the dandelions on the deep-lime-green spring lawn.

Back at the plum a sphinx moth (sometimes called a hummingbird moth) nectared on the plum blossoms.

I came following a search for 'spring beauties' because I've heard they're edible. I've really been enjoying the bird pics, though! Great camera work, and thanks for the names of birds. I enjoy them but can't remember all the names!

About Bill

Bill of the Birds

Bill Thompson III is the editor of Bird Watcher's Digest by day. He's also a keen birder, the author of many books, a dad, a field trip leader, an ecotourism consultant, a guitar player, the host of the "This Birding Life" podcast, a regular speaker/performer on the birding festival circuit, a gentleman farmer, and a fungi to be around. His North American life list is somewhere between 673 and 675. His favorite bird is the red-headed woodpecker. His "spark bird" was a snowy owl. He has watched birds in 25 countries and 44 states. But his favorite place to watch birds is on the 80-acre farm he shares with his wife, artist/writer Julie Zickefoose. Some kind person once called Bill "The Pied Piper of Birding" and he has been trying to live up to that moniker ever since.